Ryan Preece defiantly looks back on violent Daytona 500 crash

Following his second high-profile wreck at Daytona in the last two years, Ryan Preece made a plea to NASCAR to continue to look at the cars and what can be done to make them safer.

He’s not, however, planning to alter his approach on the racetrack.

“I’m not going to change anything,” Preece said this week at the Atlanta Motor Speedway. “The way I’ve looked at it is I’ve been through two really — well, more than two actually, you look at Talladega as well — I’ve been through two really bad accidents. I feel good, so I’m not going to change anything.”

Ryan Preece’s accident at Daytona last weekend was brutal. He flew up over the hood of Erik Jones’ car, taking flight and flipping before hitting the outside wall hard.

When the car came down on four tires again, everyone breathed a sigh of relief as the window netting finally came down and he exited the vehicle.

Preece described what being in a wreck like that is like for the casual viewer.

“Like a really bad wreck, you know?” he said. “I guess it really put it in perspective, a friend of mine called after that first one in ’23, and she wanted to share her bad experience when she had a bad accident. It made me realize that most people, if they have one bad accident in their life, that’s the most they’re going to have. For us as racecar drivers, we understand there could be an accident in practice or qualifying or the race.

“I guess for me, I’m numb to it. Just that’s the reality of it. But I guess it’s tough to describe. You’re beaten up but you’re good. As a racecar driver you need to be tough.”

Still, it was a harrowing accident at Daytona. It’s one NASCAR hopes to avoid going forward, knowing it can’t fully protect drivers.

That’s why Ryan Preece is continuing to push for further safety measures.

“As a racecar driver I don’t want to see a car in that type of wreck, take off like that,” he said. “That’s the only thing. As a sport we’ve been really proactive on safety, and they always have been, and I’m lucky to be racing in this era of racing, where you look at our seats, you look at all the safety measures that we go through as teams and what NASCAR puts in place, so I just want to see us keep heading down that path of stopping something that could put us in a bad spot.”

The alternative? A wreck that leaves you smarting for potentially days.

Just ask Ryan Preece.

“It’s not like landing on pillows, I’ll tell you that,” he said. “It’s not. As much as I’m fine it’s not like you don’t feel it. You definitely feel it. So I think it’s — I joked with my wife that I’m like a cat with nine lives right now. You don’t want to use all nine up.”